I hear ya. As a Canadian I’m well aware of the problems with our “universal” health care, but at least no one here goes in to life-altering debt because they broke their arm.
The US health system’s cost is not it’s only problem, I’m just comparing costs right now.
It also costs like 100k to have a baby if everything goes right. And god forbid that baby needs any sort of medical care, the insurance company can just say “sorry, your baby isn’t insured” and make you wait to get them ‘onboarded’ to the insurance plan.
That’s what happened to me and thankfully the pediatrician came into the hospital room as I was on the phone evidently in distress with the insurance company, hours after my son was born. My son needed a few test and some minor things, nothing too serious but life threatening if ignored. It would have put us out of our house since insurance wouldn’t cover it. The doctor argued with the hospital for a while to waive the bills for his care and when they wouldn’t he gave me an address and a name and told me to get there ASAP and they’ll take care of him. It turns out this guy had a whole network of people who were fed up enough that they started a sort of pro bono pediatric system. It felt like some shady back alley medical care at first having to leave my wife in the hospital to take my newborn son to get simple life saving care. Never charged us a penny and one of the guys actually pulled some string to get my sons insurance activated 3 days after he was born instead of the month we were told. We’re still paying off his bills from the hospital 3 years later for those first few hours.
I hear ya. As a Canadian I’m well aware of the problems with our “universal” health care, but at least no one here goes in to life-altering debt because they broke their arm.
The US health system’s cost is not it’s only problem, I’m just comparing costs right now.
It also costs like 100k to have a baby if everything goes right. And god forbid that baby needs any sort of medical care, the insurance company can just say “sorry, your baby isn’t insured” and make you wait to get them ‘onboarded’ to the insurance plan.
That’s what happened to me and thankfully the pediatrician came into the hospital room as I was on the phone evidently in distress with the insurance company, hours after my son was born. My son needed a few test and some minor things, nothing too serious but life threatening if ignored. It would have put us out of our house since insurance wouldn’t cover it. The doctor argued with the hospital for a while to waive the bills for his care and when they wouldn’t he gave me an address and a name and told me to get there ASAP and they’ll take care of him. It turns out this guy had a whole network of people who were fed up enough that they started a sort of pro bono pediatric system. It felt like some shady back alley medical care at first having to leave my wife in the hospital to take my newborn son to get simple life saving care. Never charged us a penny and one of the guys actually pulled some string to get my sons insurance activated 3 days after he was born instead of the month we were told. We’re still paying off his bills from the hospital 3 years later for those first few hours.